Tabloid justice

Bang to rights

Money, tabloid newspapers and justice do not mix well

WITNESSES are valuable, both to the criminal justice system and to newspapers reporting sensational cases. But the tabloids' cash could, in theory at least, skew a trial. Juries who find out that witnesses are being paid for their story are more likely to acquit. Such cases in recent years have included that of Amy Gehring, a teacher acquitted in 2002 of having sex with her underage pupils—several of whom admitted in court to being on the tabloids' payroll.

Annoyed by this, the government proposed a new law, banning all payments to witnesses. To avoid that, the Press Complaints Commission, Britain's media watchdog, issued stricter guidelines on March 19th. Payments are now banned once court proceedings are “active”—meaning after a suspect has been charged. Editors may no longer use the defence, possible until now, that the public interest is being served.

That may be enough to satisfy the government, which is eager to keep the current self-regulatory regime. Some people still want a much tougher approach to the tabloids all round, however. Their case was strengthened last week when Rebekah Wade, the recently appointed editor of the Sun, admitted to a parliamentary select committee that journalists on the country's top-selling tabloid had been in the habit of paying police officers for valuable information.

This is bad but hard to stop: journalists usually go through intermediaries—typically private detective agencies run by retired policemen, whose ties to old pals still in the force are harder to monitor. Unlike payments to witnesses, though, this is already a crime. A few high-profile prosecutions of journalists and their editors would work wonders.